Looking to achieve a specific effect using only freeware

[Day Of The T'riffics]

Hi all. Hoping someone can help, as copious google searching, and trying lots of different programmes has turned up nothing. I mainly use VirtualDub, although I also have a few other freeware programmes, like Wax, etc. But I can't find a plugin for any of them which creates the effect that I want. http://www.genarts.com/effects/sapphire#tabs-5 The above is a link to a non-freeware plug-in package for Vegas, Premiere, etc. The effect I'm after is the one called "Glint Rainbow", under the "Lighting" tab. I can't find anything even similar in freeware of any kind. I'd also like the normal Glint, Streaks and Glare from the same page, but haven't been able to find anything similar to any of them at all. Does anyone know of any freeware software/plug-in combination which could help me achieve this?

[poisondeathray]

Possibly blender, although it's not as simple to use as a plugin where you simply dial up the settings

http://vimeo.com/16748038
http://vimeo.com/17251718

If this is a one-shot deal you could use the trial versions of various plugins. They are usually good for 30 days or so

[Day Of The T'riffics]

Can Blender be used as a video editor? I thought it was a package for creating 3D animations?

[poisondeathray]

Can Blender be used as a video editor? I thought it was a package for creating 3D animations?

It can, with the video sequence editor - but it's not as easy to use as a real NLE

There are tutorials on youtube or vimeo showing how to use that feature

eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sODml0PBlo

[Day Of The T'riffics]

Okay, thanks. I'll give that a go.

[Day Of The T'riffics]

I've been having a play around, and I don't think it's going to be what I'm after. As far as I can tell, there are a few effects in the VSE of Blender, but no sparkling one like I'm after. Those tutorials are for rendering a glare on to 3D objects that you're creating in Blender. I don't want to do that, I want to affect video files I already have.

[poisondeathray]

You create masks and/or composite onto your video . You don't have to render the objects. You composite the glow or whatever effect onto your video. This might be too much unless you're already familar with masks , blender and compositing .

Hopefully someone else has better freeware ideas

[poisondeathray]

I suppose another approach would be to use an image editor like gimp then batch process the image sequence. It depends on what exactly you want to do and how you have this set up (e.g. is it animated, keyframed, position etc...)

http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/sparkle-on-objects

[Day Of The T'riffics]

That's still looking to create specific sparkles on specific things. What I'm after is a filter which will just, be default, add a sparkle to everything, exactly like the filter in the link in the OP. As if the camera had a starburst filter over the lens.

[budwzr]

Glint is basically an animated starburst.

But it has a lot of parameters, not simple to make from scratch because its kind of mapped to the high whites.

But yeah, you can probably come up with a rough fake-o version, but that would be tedious trying to match move and composite into an existing footage.

You can probably google something, then work it into your project if you understand basic compositing. If not, you're chained to the special eFX smut peddlers. Hahaha.

Find a sequence you like, resize it into different sizes, and throw them all at once like a huge bang grenade that the cops use to disorient the perp.

I did one of those recently. The Caballero Effect, I call it. It was a custom job for a specific purpose, to mask something else. But the client didn't like it, so they went with something else.

If the sequence is short, post it here and somebody will help you out.



This was a giant glint festival